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“I trust that in the future more analysts will tell us about their [own] analytic experiences.” These are the closing words of a warm and thoughtfully incisive recollection by Stanley Stern of “My Experience of Analysis with Loewald” (2009). While Stern's memoir is a reflective contribution and his hopeful attitude worthy of respect, a post-analytic experience of my own leaves me more wary of such reports.
A bewildered and stunningly immature psychiatric resident in my early twenties, feeling underwater in a sea of anxiety, I turned eagerly to a personal analysis as offering a reed to the air of sanity. Calm was more than I thought possible. Already greatly in debt and with only minimal income, the only way I could arrange a personal analysis was as the control case of a beginning candidate, one willing to see me at the end of my work day and for a fee that would not have covered her monthly postage.
I had the good fortune to find such a willing student analyst, and in the retrospect of a half century, I have a sense of profound gratitude for my good fortune in having found her, for her willingness to work with me. However at that time, I confronted her harshly and for a long time relentlessly with all the provocative doubt and even disdain that I then unknowingly tried to deflect from myself. In simple terms, I now think she was a lifesaver, but I gave her a hell of a run for the little money I paid.
After she and I had worked together over two years, my obligations to then-current public service laws required me to move to another city. There I quickly resumed analytic work, this time with a training analyst since there was no doubt in my mind of my intention to pursue analytic training and I now had a beginning income.